But in the movie I was not quite sold on that explanation. It left me confused. Is it that the mere presence of Newt reminds Call that he visited a whore once out of human need? The bad taste of one memory alone is keeping him from embracing his son? Reading the book many years later, I learned something else about Call: he feels himself bound to certain principles, especially hard work; the memory of his visits to Maggie seems to offend that principle for him as well.
Maybe even more importantly, it turns out that Call in the book is haunted by the memory of failing someone. And Newt is a living reminder of all that. But Gus is talking about the chance to be human, to be like everyone else. Call got his rifle out of the scabbard and cleaned it, though it was in perfect order.
Gus had jarred him with mention of Maggie, the bitterest memory of his life. She had died in Lonesome Dove some years before, but the memory had lost none of its salt and sting, for what had happened with her had been unnecessary and was now uncorrectable. He could feel that he had done as well as any man could have, given the raw conditions of the frontier.
But Maggie had not been a fighting manβjust a needful young whore, who had for some reason fixed on him as the man who could save her from her own mistakes. All this makes it more convincing, why Call would be keeping his son at a distance. In the movie, when Call is against the idea of Lorena joining them on the drive, I thought that was just his introversion again: pure discomfort with women, and a dose of old-fashioned sexism. Lorena still cries in both book and movie, but with some differences.
In the book, she feels there is no use in crying, and McMurtry emphasizes this point. Lorie in the book retreats into a protective silence during her captivity and even after Gus and July ride in shooting β but McMurtry does have her crying many weeks later, at the idea of losing Gus to another woman.
